r/technology • u/geoxol • Jan 13 '23 • Bravo! 1 Helpful (Pro) 1

Apple CEO Tim Cook to take more than 40% pay cut Business

https://apnews.com/article/technology-apple-inc-tim-cook-business-d056553b10120c4a968b562cb7ece5d2
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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

He is a billionaire. He could earn exactly zero dollars and he would make more in interest than you ever will.

Hell, he could pay his current salary every year and he wouldn't even notice.

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u/Zefirus Jan 13 '23

A billionaire could have his money in the worst savings account making 1% per year (the financial equivalent of burying it all in the backyard) and he'd make more money off that 1 year than someone in the upper class would make in their entire career.

If you had a salary of $300,000 a year and worked for 30 years, a billionaire with that 1% of interest for 1 year would still have made more money than you.

People really don't understand how big a billion dollars is.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

Yeah. I'm having fun arguing with people who try to convince me that they could spend a billion dollars just like that.

Nope, they couldn't. Not even on purpose.

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u/heckles Jan 14 '23

I mean I know a guy who accidentally spent $44B in less than a year.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 14 '23

Yeah, and he spent a few decades making a name for himself to get to the position where people listened to him and took him seriously about that.

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u/lllldddd01 Jan 14 '23

But you can spend $44 billion dollars just like that

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

The median lifetime earnings is less than $4m.

He would earn that interest in a matter of a week or so.

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u/darkhoogan Jan 13 '23

Its even worse when you look at the whole planet and not just america. Worldwide the median yearly income is $1000-2000 (depending on methodology, I saw several conflicting figures).

Say you took the higher number and that you worked for 50 years. The median person will probably only earn $100,000 in their whole life.

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u/oboshoe Jan 13 '23

Sure.

But then why would he stay on at Apple?

The board wants him to stay until at least 2026.

(having said that. I would have retired long ago with the money he has made)

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u/Kershiser22 Jan 13 '23

(having said that. I would have retired long ago with the money he has made)

People who become CEO's generally don't have a lot of interests outside their work. It's harder to become a CEO when you check reddit at work all day. My boss was telling me how his wife gets mad at him because he's always talking to her about work, at all times of the day. The business is what is on his mind 90% of his waking hours.

That isn't the case for me, that's for sure.

(having said that. I'm not sure if I would retire if I had that kind of money. I'm afraid I'd be too lazy if I didn't have a job to go to every day.)

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u/oboshoe Jan 13 '23

Yea. Their work kinda is their life.

I earning a very nice living in tech. I have absolutely no complaints about pay. But I've also reached an equilibrium.

I don't desire to be top management. Yes they make much much more. But I'm not willing to trade away more of my personal life for more work life.

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u/NeoPossum Jan 13 '23

It's harder to become a CEO when you check reddit at work all day.

Musk seems to prefer shitposting for hours on Twitter to fixing his damned cars, so there's that.

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u/Kershiser22 Jan 13 '23

And it only cost him $200B!

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u/NeoPossum Jan 13 '23

"go woke, go broke", as they say lol

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

At that level, nothing you do you do for money. You will never, ever be able to spend that much money even if you tried.

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u/BatchThompson Jan 13 '23

Bet. Wire it over and I'll see what kind of damage I can do.

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u/AlucardSX Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 13 '23

Be careful what you wish for. A century from now, as you lay on your deathbed in your giant mansion after a greatly prolonged life thanks to the very cutting edge of medical science, you will look back at your time spent jet-setting around the world, eating at the best restaurants, enjoying the company of the most beautiful women and lazing in the sun on deck of one of your three mega yachts, all without even making a dent into your vast fortune, and you will rue the day you ever took on this impossible challenge.

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u/BatchThompson Jan 13 '23

No time to sunbathe, I'm got enormous amounts of money to spend frivolously.

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u/datafox00 Jan 13 '23

This should have been a Twilight Zone episode, chilling...

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23 edited 28d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/UnseenTardigrade Jan 13 '23

True, but that's actually not hard at all to beat if it's your goal. Buy a super yacht, hundred million dollar mansion, large private island, high end private jet, etc, and you'll get through a billion in no time. The key is making really big purchases, not trying to hit it by blowing 10k a day on clothes or something.

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

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u/UnseenTardigrade Jan 13 '23

This is a much more reasonable approach. I was specifically trying to avoid pure investments from my example though because that makes it too easy.

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u/AwGe3zeRick Jan 14 '23

Why? Why die never spending your money.

I mean, I get being financially responsible but you left out a big part

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u/Occulense Jan 13 '23

Buy twitter and run it directly into the ground

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u/Ghudda Jan 14 '23

And you know what you can do immediately after buying a hundred million dollar mansion or private island or superyacht? Sell it back for just as much. You haven't "spent" the money, just converted it into other assets. Even after you've purchased those things you can go to a bank and take out things like home equity loans and get most of your money back instantly.

Let's change the argument and say you're not allowed to buy anything to own it. Having access is a good as ownership after all. So, without investing, you have upwards of 30,000 a day to spend on something like a vacation rental house, car leases, chartering a yacht, travel, smaller purchases, food, entertainment, healthcare, personal assistants/driver/bodyguard/escorts/whatever. How do you spend that much money consistently your entire life?

You can always be wildly irresponsible with your money and buy completely nonsensically priced items like "fine art", things made by supreme, or Gwyneth Paltrow's goop store. But outside of just giving the money away to the people around you or swindlers, how do you get rid of it?

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u/CaiusCossades Jan 14 '23

... So Brewster's Billions

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u/Pr0nzeh Jan 13 '23

Yes we also learned basic math

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u/KopitarFan Jan 13 '23

Some of y'all never watched Brewster's Millions and it shows

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u/BatchThompson Jan 14 '23

Couple billion dollars and I could buy every copy in existence and watch them all at the same time

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u/GigaCringeMods Jan 13 '23 edited Jan 29 '23

At that level, nothing you do you do for money.

But here is the problem; they still do. At certain point their goal is simply to get more. "Money" as a concept loses its inherent value and reason. To them it only starts being a number, and the only thing that matters is growing that number. That is why they keep hoarding more of it, that is why instead of relaxing and enjoying the rest of their life in complete financial freedom they still want to make more profit. Because the focus of their entire life has over time shifted to growing that number, forgetting the reason why they were after that number in the first place. It becomes tied heavily to their self-esteem, to the point where it becomes a representation of their self-worth.

The scale of the numbers when talking about millions or billions is hard for human mind to fathom. The best way to compare it is to think that a million seconds is 11 days. But a billion seconds is 31.5 years. The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is... pretty much a billion dollars. Anyone that has crossed or come close to passing the billion dollar barrier is already neck-deep in the mental issue of needing more money. And it is a problem since all that extra money they are hoarding is out of the circulation, draining resources from the rest of society.

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u/Dazz316 Jan 13 '23

He's worth that much, he doesn't have that to spend.

He'll have more to spend than all of us combined but his back balance isn't 10 figures

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u/nevergotgold Jan 13 '23

I could easily burn through a billion in a week without much effort lol

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

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u/Pece17 Jan 13 '23

Buy a sports team, or two

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

Nobody's gonna sell one to you, not the expensive ones. Not unless you've proven you can actually lead one.

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u/Pece17 Jan 14 '23

True, I suppose

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u/molrobocop Jan 13 '23

Challenge accepted.

I bet whatever the sum, I go the Andrew Carnegie route and get my name on all kinds shit. Blowing it at the institutional level. Not just stuff.

How much money does it take to establish a major university in this day and age? I bet a fucking shitload.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

Great, you'll spend, what, a million bucks a day for a good cause?

How? Think about this. Are you gonna call a hospital and ask them for their bank account to send a million dollars? They're gonna hang up. Or they're going to want to talk to you. For hours. Find out who you are, if you are legit, whether this is a scam, what to do with taxes. They have to ask legal how all this works above board. Legal will get back to you in a few weeks. Or months. They'll want documents that you really own your money. Your bank will want to talk to you about that. In person.

You're going to spend days just on this one single donation.

You want to establish a major university? That's gonna cost a few hundred million dollars. And several years of your life, full time. If you want the project to work out, instead of it just dying while you only invested a few initial millions after a year or two.

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u/molrobocop Jan 14 '23

See, that's the great thing about money. If I have a lot of it, I can pay people to make it happen.

Let's pretend I want to build a major university in Washington. MOL Institute of Technology. MOLIT for short.

Step 1: Pair myself up with a major law firm. I'm going to need people to set up trusts, work the land issues, taxes, permits, contracts, and accountants. And if I'm wise, an external firm to audit the finances to minimize grift.

Step 2: Find the major players. I'd probably the start with a major architectural firm. Good example: Skidmore, Owing & Merrill. They were in charge of Burj Khalifa. They can do a mega project.

"I want to build a university. Money is not an object. I need you to manage the overall construction. This is my team. They'll handle our contracts and finances. I want you to be in charge of the architecture, urban planning, and engineering. I want you to subcontract whatever you need to. Including individuals to find a site within 50 miles of Seattle."

In parallel, hire a talent agency to track down university academics with expertise in the field of, let's see, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, mining, forestry. Those are my hard asks. Then, a few current and retired university administrators. Offer them large consulting fees. "I want you to plan the academia of my university." The talent agency will also bring in project managers to collect those requirements. Similarly, guidance on what types institutional requirements. "We want chemistry labs, auditoriums, etc." The PM's will also be the intermediary between those and the design firm.

Once the major details are known, the SO&M will start construction with the people they've hired to do the build. A big firm, like Hoffman. They'll in turn hire skilled trades as required.

Staffing, I could probably recruit professors with the promise of tenure, huge wages and major research dollars. Where facility growth is needed, we'll develop in subsequent years.

You know what could be used to burn A LOT of cash? My university's endowment. How many billions do I have? Because it would take in excess of $53B to come ahead of Harvard.

It'll take a little legwork to get started. And years to get going, but none of this exotic. That's the start, and surely there will be delays and overruns, and things I've missed at the highest level. But, we'll get there.

While that's going on, "Hey law team. Start making calls to Patty Murray, and the offices of king, and Snohomish county. Plus the city leaders. I'm going to need you to find a way to make a bigass payment to the public."

"Yes, this is Dave Lawyerson of the Lawyerson Law Firm, representative of molrobocop. Yes, the billionaire philanthropist. He wants to fund the Sound Transit's West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions. Yes, he's prepared to finance the $12B project. Could you help me set up a call with Senator Murray?"

Again, long term commitments. But when you think big enough, and hire the right players, you can make it happen. Particularly after you get the ball rolling with the major firms.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '23

[deleted]

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u/molrobocop Jan 14 '23

WTF are you going on about? And you're thinking so very small regardless.

You're arguing for different things. We're not talking about ROI. We're talking about liquidating a multi-billions in assets.

To which I could easily do. Particularly if my assets were not just cash, which would be likely. I could easily sign over assets of stocks and bonds to existing public and private universities. Real estate would be harder. But I'm sure an org would be willing to flip assets. Like MacKenzie Scott. Donated a mansion.

My background, I previously worked at the more granular level on a $3B facility. I helped establish the footprint, layout, and requirements for tooling and equipment. I was one of the people I'd ultimately have hired.

Thing is, if you've never worked on a major project, the hardest parts are money and schedule. If you've got the luxury of time and deep pockets, you can very easily spend way more.

Semiconductor factory? $10-$20B, 3-5 years. And there's nothing to say I can't have a university project in Washington and one in Michigan. We won't be competing for major resources. Maybe steel. We'd better get those contracts set early.

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u/Clyzm Jan 13 '23

Challenge accepted. I'd be out trying to buy fighter jets as a civilian.

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

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u/hardonchairs Jan 13 '23

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nalls#Team_SHAR

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '23

[deleted]

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u/hardonchairs Jan 13 '23

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/3001626/which-private-jets-do-tech-billionaires-jeff-bezos-bill

Not only does Ellison own a Hawaiian island and a yacht racing team, but he also owns two military fighter jets: a decommissioned Soviet MiG-29, and an SIAI-Marchetti S. 211, previously used by the Italian air force.

The United States government has reportedly kept Ellison from flying the MiG-29 in America, because it's “considered a firearm”.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ Jan 13 '23

So you got a chance if you're a former US marine and test pilot and have the connections, and even then you can't fly it.

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u/Clyzm Jan 13 '23

A billion dollars is a lot of money. I'd definitely see how far I can get through legal channels, other countries, etc. If I got even as far as flying one for a while I'd call it a massive win.

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u/Chippiewall Jan 14 '23

Unless you're Elon Musk and want to buy twitter. Or you're Jeff Bezos and want to start a rocket company. Or you're Larry Ellison and want to go Yacht racing.

You can definitely spend that money on stuff if you wanted to.

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u/this_barb Jan 13 '23

Because he was Steve Jobs' protege. Being at Apple isn't just a job to him, I suspect.

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u/BrazilianTerror Jan 13 '23

Yeah, no CEO from a fortune 500 needs to work. They could retire pretty comfortably with a year’s worth of pay. They work either because it satisfy their ego( they like having the power or compete with others) or because they find some sense of purpose in working.

It’s a hard grasp for the majority of working class people, since they have no alternative other to work and in the worse jobs, but for a rich person, work can just fill a sense of purpose that they don’t think they would find elsewhere.

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u/ENrgStar Jan 13 '23

He isn’t even working for the money. He’s working because he likes it.

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u/RabidGuineaPig007 Jan 13 '23

Toyota's CEO is Akio Toyoda. It's his family's company. $300B valuation. World's largest automaker.

His biggest take home was $7M/yr all in.